It emerges not as a shoot but as a tendril. Furry and curved, something prehistoric, of the grave. One does not ooh and aah over the baby fern. One is curious, to be sure. And circumspect. A bit in awe. But not giddy or giggle-prone. Adorable the young fern is not.
But as it grows, it comes into its own. It unfurls, straightens out, becomes the plant it was meant to be. Lacey and delicate. At once contemporary and old-fashioned. Ferns give me faith.
I know where to find them, walked right to them on Friday, crossed Soapstone, turned left onto a springy woods trail and there they were. Early, of course. But then everything is early this year.
Tall, nodding flowers, pink as buds and becoming a heavenly blue in maturity. A blue edging toward periwinkle. A color seen less often this time of year, so dominated are we by yellows, pinks and purples.
The Virginia bluebell thrives in woodland soil, rich, loamy, leaf-strewn. There are few of these wildflowers in our woods. Which makes seeing them each spring all the more essential. I make my way to their home as if visiting a national monument or a famous painting. It’s one of my rites of spring.
Photo: Bellewood Gardens.com
For the last few days the oak leaves have been inching slowly heavenward. The nights have been cool, so they have stayed small and purposeful and brilliant. They are flowers but not flowering, leaves but not leaving.
At this point each one is separate, distinct, on its own skyward pilgrimage. They raise themselves up as if in prayer. They catch the evening light.
March came in like a lamb and is going out like one, too. I raise a silent cheer for lambs, then, and for spring green, pileated woodpeckers (just saw a huge one on our wood pile), fresh mint (sprouting in our garden) and a backyard still in progress.
The double-barreled tree trunk by the fence, it can still be turned into a funky water feature. And the day lilies we transplanted, they may still bloom. Springtime has many charms, but chief among them is potential, the light and the growing season that lie ahead of us. Would that I could always feel the promise of each day.
It’s springtime in Washington, which means we host friends we haven’t seen in years. They come from the city and the suburbs, from the Midwest and the West Coast. And they bring with them a whiff of the way things used to be, of the pre-suburban me. They remind me that there is a grace that flows from good company.
Last night there were 12 of us in our small kitchen, friends and kids of friends, eating and laughing and talking about everything from the Supreme Court health care debate to the plethora of Chicago microbreweries.
Roots and seedlings aren’t the only things being stirred to life this time of year.
The rains fell and the winds blew and now there is a new palette in our woods. The brown of autumn and winter, of crushed leaves and dry twigs, has given way to green.
Not just one green but many. There is the iridescent hue of new leaves sprouting on the cottonwood tree. The dark sheen of skunk cabbage and may apple as it sprouts in the lowlands. The verdant tips of new hedge growth. We live not in monochrome but in kodachrome (and probably something much more up-to-date that doesn’t rhyme).
As the green grows, the brown recedes. We no longer pad upon a bed of leaves but a carpet of grass.
Last night, a stroll through the spring twilight. The street was quiet; only a few last-minute mulchers still covering their garden beds. (Tonight we will be covering tender plants against the predicted freeze.) To the west, the sky was streaks of brightness and a smudged contrail. To the east, a gathering darkness. In every direction, a softness born of moist soil and budding trees.
Tulips are up, dogwood is blooming and Bradford pears waning. The Kwanzan cherry in our front yard has erupted with its double pink blossoms like big greedy fists.
What was stark and monochromatic has become pliable and pastel. I left an empty vessel, and with every step I was refilled.
A dawn chorus draws me outside. Bird song, crow caw, the rat-a-tat-tat of the woodpecker. I walk without earphones, content with the music of the morning.
On my way I spot a herd of deer. Three leap across the road in front of me, but with that finally honed sense of suburban wildlife presence, I have a feeling there are more. And soon I spot another herd, five or six of the little guys, grazing on new plants and leaves.
As the two groups merge and bound into the woods, I spot one little fellow who’s been left behind. Forlorn and nervous, he paws the ground with his small hoof. I realize suddenly that I’m the one who’s cut him off from his kin, that he can’t get to the others because I stand in his way.
I pick up my pace so he can catch up with the others. So that I no longer have to see him surrounded by basketball hoops and mulch bags, a creature as out of place as I am.
As spring proceeds at warp speed I strain to catch the hedge in front of my office as it erupts with new growth. I’ve written about this hedge before, about the moment in its unfolding when the pink of the bud and the green of the leaf are in equipoise.
This year it caught me by surprise, but I’m glad I noticed. It’s important to see the hedge at its beginning, to travel the journey of the growing season together. To be able to say, I knew those leaves when they were born; heck, I knew them even before they were born.
They are tender at this point in their emergence, with all their young leaf life before them. Later on they will undoubtedly be hot and tired and weary of being green. If only they could remember how they look now, the rosy splendor of their emergence. That’s why I look and linger. I’ll remember it for them.
The cherry trees blossom on their schedule, not on ours. So you rush to them after work, even if it’s cloudy and threatening rain, even if you know there will be a crush of people there.
Maybe, in fact, it’s because of the people. Their faces as careworn and hopeful as last year, their picnic baskets and cameras in tow. They are here, as I am, for renewal.